Standing in a crowd, surrounded by thousands of strangers who all seemed far more prepared for this moment than I was. Waiting for Coldplay to walk on stage and give me an evening to remember forever - either as a high point experience wise or a moment I would remember as lesson to never overestimate myself. I remember thinking, briefly, that I could still leave. That I could turn this into another almost-story.

I didn’t leave.

Mumbai, the crowd, and the part of me that wanted to flee

The truth is, I wasn’t scared of missing out on the concert. I was extremely scared of experiencing it. The crowd. The noise. The lights. The sheer scale of it all. Every possible trigger for sensory overload packed neatly into one evening. This is usually the point where I tell myself I’m “not built for these things” and retreat into safer, quieter pleasures. Headphones. Controlled volume. Familiar rooms. Predictable exits.

I had trained for this for months. Even before Coldplay ever announced their India dates, I was convinced they would come and that I needed to be prepared for it. And when I say I trained for months, I actually trained myself for the sensory overload that a concert could be in the best way I knew how. I started by taking public transport again. First during low rush periods with headphones on. First, sitting at the back of the auto where you are forced to close quarters with strangers and sit touching each other. Then to public buses and metros where it was more than two people at a time. Then slowly moving onto rush hours - still with headphones on (same song on repeat to have something to ground me). And then slowly travelling in public transportation during rush hours without headphones for short journeys, that became longer and longer.

Most of you reading this, will probably be wondering that these are all everyday common things that people do on a daily basis. Why would I consider this as ‘training for a concert’. Well, I have always been hypersensitive to stimuli. Exposure to bright lights (or the sun) for an hour or so is enough to give me a freaking headache that won’t go away for the rest of the day. Same for loud noises or crowds. Putting all 3 together is a disaster for me. And my nervous system had been at it’s worst back in 2020-21. So, it had been a uphill task.

I kept waiting for my threshold to snap. For the lights to become too sharp, the bass too heavy, the crowd too close. I kept bracing for the moment when enjoyment would tip into overwhelm and I’d have to negotiate with myself to stay. That moment didn’t arrive the way I expected it to.

When Coldplay finally came on stage, the crowd went mad, and something in me did the opposite of panic. My brain, usually so eager to narrate every experience into submission, went quiet. The noise stopped being noise. It became atmosphere. The lights stopped being intrusive. They became part of the story unfolding around me.

That surprised me more than anything else that night.

Maybe it was the music. I didn’t stop being sensitive. I stopped being afraid of my sensitivity.

And for someone who has spent years managing input like a negotiation in old Delhi bazaar, that felt like a small miracle disguised as a concert.

In the crowd, I realized I already knew these songs with my body. A song from a phase when I was hopeful. Another from a phase when I was just trying to get through the day. A chorus that once meant comfort, now sounding like reassurance. People say that is art. For me, only music has a way of doing that.

When the first familiar notes hit, it wasn’t excitement that took over. It was a quiet feeling of ‘I am okay.’ That might be what surprised me most. Not the scale. Not the spectacle. But how safe it felt to be small inside something so large. To let the music carry the weight instead of me having to hold it all together. Trust that I wouldn’t lose myself if I let go just a little.

The moment it stopped being theoretical

I had prepared for everything I could name. The crowd. The lights. The noise. The exits. I had rehearsed coping strategies like a responsible adult who knows their limits. What I hadn’t prepared for was the way the music would arrive through my body.

I had standing tickets. Which meant there was no polite distance between me and the sound. No buffer. No chair to anchor myself to. When the beat dropped, I didn’t just hear it. I felt it. Under my feet first. A steady, physical vibration traveling up through the ground, through my legs, into my chest. 

That was the moment the fear loosened its grip. I feel that one feeling is still very impossible to intellectualize or express. 

The music wasn’t something happening to me. It was something happening with me. Around me. Beneath me. I wasn’t overstimulated. I felt connected to it. The same sensitivity I had been bracing against was suddenly doing something else entirely. It was receiving.

And then they performed Viva La Vida.

I don’t know how close I was to the stage in measurable terms. Close enough that I felt I could probably reach out and touch the band members. The song stopped being a memory and became a shared pulse. The crowd surged, the lights flared, and thousands of voices rose at once, singing about fallen kings and borrowed power and the strange humility of survival.

I didn’t think about meaning. I just stood there, vibrating along with the ground, letting the song exist without interpretation. There was something so grounding about that. Feeling small without feeling erased. Feeling part of something without having to perform belonging.

And for a first concert, that felt like enough.

After the Lights, After the Noise

The concert didn’t end the way stories like to end. There was no freeze-frame moment, no neat emotional crescendo that carried me home on a high. It ended the way real things end. Slowly. With people drifting away, voices hoarse, bodies tired, adrenaline leaking out in uneven waves.

Mumbai was still Mumbai when we stepped back into it. Traffic resumed its arguments. Vendors kept shouting. Life refused to pause to acknowledge that something extraordinary had just happened to me. I liked that. There was comfort in the normalcy of it. As if the city was saying, you felt something big, good for you, now come back and live.

What surprised me was how my body remembered the night long after the sound had faded. The vibration didn’t vanish immediately. Even a year later, I can still feel it in my heart and in my feet. I

I walked away knowing this wasn’t just about a band or a song or even a first concert checked off a list. It was proof that sometimes the thing you’re most afraid of teaches your nervous system a new language.

In December, I wrote about how rest feels illegal. How the world keeps telling us that productivity is like a moral obligation and exhaustion is like a badge of honor. How doing nothing feels like disobedience. How slowing down feels like slipping off the map. That post came from a place of very tired and quiet rebellion.

But rebellion, I’m learning, has seasons.

For the first time in my life (a first in four decades) I took seven days off from work. Not because I had a trip planned or because I had work that needed handled. It wasn’t because of any other reason, but to practice what I was preaching… To rest. I have been feeling it in my body and my mind - they were starting to rebel and telling me that they needed rest. And so, I took days off with other plan than to sleep. 

The first three days I was ‘productive’ because I managed to clean and re-organise my bookshelves and make space for more. I had been putting that off for a while even though books were starting to pile up everywhere (including my closet that is meant for my clothes) because it takes a lot of time. Once that was done, I did what I promised myself… eat (I don’t have to prep or cook), sleep and stare at the ceiling - letting my mind go blank.

You can only rest for so long before something inside you begins to stir. Not with urgency. Not with hunger. More like a low hum. A reminder that you are still in motion, even when you are still. That breath doesn’t stop just because you stopped performing. That the heart doesn’t wait for permission to keep beating.

That hum is where 2026 begins for me.

My word for the year is Momentum.

Not the loud kind. Not the startup-bro, grind-culture, “rise and conquer” version of it. Not the kind that burns fast and collapses faster. I mean the quieter kind. The kind that builds without spectacle. The kind that reveals itself in tiny shifts. A sentence written. A thought held gently. A boundary kept. A song felt all the way through without rushing to the next one.

Momentum, as I want it this year, is not about how fast I move. It’s about whether I’m still moving at all.

After learning how to rest without guilt, I don’t want to swing violently into ambition again. I don’t want whiplash disguised as motivation. I don’t want another season of “I should be doing more” echoing in my head like unpaid rent. This year, I want continuity. I want the soft discipline of showing up without spectacle. I want the kind of forward motion that doesn’t require me to abandon myself at the starting line.

Momentum feels like choosing life in increments.

Some days, it might be just getting up and showing up at my work desk. Or it could be just writing a page about all my random thoughts. Other days, not quitting. Some days, it might look like finally letting a thought reach its end. Other days, simply letting a feeling pass without naming it a personal failing. Momentum, for me, only asks that I participate in my own becoming.

And maybe that’s enough for a year.

What Momentum Looks Like

Momentum, in my world, is not a dramatic reinvention montage. There is no triumphant background score swelling as I finally “get my life together,” even though I might play ‘Never Mind’ on repeat. This is is the part where I learn how to keep walking where others stop.

Some days, momentum will look boring.

It will look like opening a half-finished draft instead of abandoning it for a shinier new idea. It will look like replying to the difficult message instead of mentally rehearsing it for three days. It will look like choosing the slower road even when the faster one keeps whispering threats about being left behind.

It will look like showing up imperfectly and refusing to make a tragedy out of it.

Momentum will also look wildly inconsistent. There will be days when I move with conviction and days when I crawl with doubt. Both count. This year, I am no longer interested in only validating the versions of myself that arrive with confidence and clarity. Hesitation is also motion. Uncertainty is not stagnation. Pauses are not failure. They are part of the rhythm, whether I like it or not.

Somewhere along the way, we learned to confuse momentum with intensity. As if forward movement has to hurt to be real. As if ease is a lie we haven’t earned. I don’t believe that anymore. I think momentum can be gentle. I think it can feel like steadiness instead of struggle. Like water that doesn’t crash but still reshapes stone over time.

This is the year I stop waiting for the perfect emotional weather to begin again.

This is the year I move even when I am unsure. Especially when I am unsure.

Momentum, But Make It Mine

For me, shows up in my journal first. It always does. Journaling is where I measure aliveness most honestly. Last year taught me how to stop. This year is teaching me how to begin again without violence. Not the intoxicating kind of beginning where you promise yourself a new personality and a better schedule. The quieter kind, where you return to unfinished entries (or blogposts) and don’t treat them like evidence of failure. Where you write badly on purpose just to keep the current running. Where you trust that form will come later, but motion has to come first.

It also shows up in how I sit with symbols. As some of you know, Tarot has never been about prediction for me. It’s been a language for the things I struggle to say out loud. Last year, I pulled slower cards. Pause cards. And I admit that it made me feel bad at first, because I had bought into the world’s version of momentum. This year, I notice more movement in the spreads. Pages walking. Knights charging. Even Death, doing what it does best. Change doesn’t ask for permission, it just keeps happening. Momentum is realizing that I don’t have to chase transformation. I only have to stop resisting the current I’m already standing in.

And then there’s the emotional terrain. The part one can rarely map in clean lines.

Momentum, emotionally, means I don’t stay stuck just because I recognize the pattern. Familiar pain is still pain. Familiar fear is still fear. This year, I want to stop nesting inside what I know just because it’s predictable. I want to move even when the next feeling doesn’t come with subtitles.

I hope that it will not be like reopening old doors just to check if the hurt is still alive inside them. I hope it will look like choosing steadiness over emotional whiplash. That it will look like learning how to stay with myself when distraction is easier. I HOPE that it will mean letting music move through me without turning it into escape. Letting stories mirror me without consuming me. Letting longing exist without immediately demanding a story arc where it gets resolved.

What I Hope 2026 Will Be

What I want from 2026 is not a dramatic leap. I hope it to be a year that grows through accumulation. A year where small steps don’t feel insignificant, because they’re part of a longer arc. A year where my goals don’t sit on separate islands but feel woven into my everyday routines. A year where discipline isn’t punishment, and rest isn’t guilt.

Momentum that lets me move in that direction.

It connects my dreams to my actions.

It supports both ambition and gentleness.

It reminds me that growth often happens in the follow-through, not the beginning.

And that’s why it’s my word for the year ahead. Wish me luck!

Social media is inundated with the assertion that “no one should be a billionaire” and it has become a prominent moral standing among a vocal group of people on the interweb. The phrase raises legitimate concerns about wealth inequality, labour exploitation and concentration of power.

However, as with many slogans that gain cultural traction, its broadness and vagueness risks collapsing distinct forms of wealth accumulation into a single ethical category and in doing so, it often obstructs the very mechanisms of power that it seeks to critique.

The hullabaloo surrounding Taylor Swift’s emergence as a billionaire reveals a lot about this herd mentality which is rampant online and it is often accompanied by no amount of critical thinking. Taylor’s wealth has provoked a cultural anxiety that appears disproportionate compared to public reactions toward ultra-wealthy individuals.

The public outrage is not merely economic in nature. It is cultural and gendered. Taylor is not an oil magnate, a private equity executive or a tech monopolist. She is a highly visible cultural producer whose labour, persona and emotional expressiveness in forms of singing, songwriting and art are central to her public identity. The discomfort surrounding her wealth cannot solely be seen as opposition to inequality. Rather, in my opinion, it reflects unresolved tensions about women’s access to power, ownership and legitimacy within capitalist systems.

My demand is for analytical precision and critical thinking to prevail in this age of herd mentality and stupid but divisive “hot-takes” that sweep through social media.

Accumulation of wealth is not a morally uniform phenomenon and the process by which wealth is generated and the degree of labour involved, the transparency of accumulation and the uses of the accumulated wealth and power matters. Taylor’s case complicates dominant narratives about billionaires.

The Anti-Billionaire Rhetoric:

Extreme wealth at any point of time in the past, present or future is off-putting. The claim that extreme wealth is inherently immoral rests on the assumption that no individual can accumulate wealth to such an extreme degree without exploiting others. It should be noted that this assumption is often justified in cases involving resource extraction, financial speculation or monopolistic practices but the logic becomes less persuasive when applied indiscriminately.

Political economists often distinguish between different modes of capital accumulation. Wealth derived through rent seeking behaviour such as controlling access to housing, healthcare or natural resources operates very differently from wealth generated through direct labour and intellectual production. If we ignore this distinction, then there is no distinction between a George Lucas and a Elon Musk or a Mark Zuckerberg. If we ignore these distinctions, we are transforming the argument from structural analysis to a symbolic condemnation.

Taylor Swift’s wealth is overwhelmingly linked to monetization of intellectual property she helped create. Her dominant income streams include album sales, touring, licencing and publishing her art which is directly tied to cultural consumption rather than essential goods or coercive market control. Obviously, this does not render her wealth morally pure but it does situate it differently from other forms of wealth accumulation that rely on scarcity, dispossession or systemic harm.

Opposition to inequality requires specificity and critical analysis. Otherwise, without specificity, moral outrage becomes performative rather than transformative in the long run.

Taylor Swift’s Cultural Production:

One of the defining features of Taylor’s career is the visibility of her own labour. Unlike many wealthy individuals whose work is abstracted behind corporate structures, Taylor’s labour is public and ongoing. It is not an accident that she has achieved this level of success. She writes her music, performs extensively (is a fan of over-delivering) and maintains creative involvement across all her work. Nobody else was baking cookies for their fans and having secret hang-out sessions and opening up their hearts the way Taylor has continued to do.

The Eras Tour exemplifies this labour-intensive model. The tour was not merely a revenue generating enterprise but a physically demanding performance that requires endurance, rehearsal and emotional presence. The tours impact includes employing thousands of workers and contributing significantly to local economies which complicates the narratives that frame her wealth as purely extractive. Additionally, her model of – "if the tour does well, everyone involved gets paid more" should set a precedence in the entertainment industry!

Cultural labour is often undervalued precisely because it is associated with pleasure and emotion. The assumption that creative work is less than industrial or technical labour has historically been used to justify its under-compensation. Taylor’s success threatens the entertainment industry as it challenges this hierarchy by demonstrating that cultural production can generate enormous value when creators retain control over their work.

To dismiss her wealth without acknowledging the labour, creativity and hard work behind it reinforces the very devaluation of artistic work that critics of capitalism often seek to dismantle.

Ownership as Resistance:

The most significant factor distinguishing Taylor from other ultra-wealthy figures is her approach to ownership. The sale of her masters without her consent exposed a structural vulnerability faced by artists within the music industry. Taylor Swift engaged in a strategic market-based intervention and re-recorded her catalogue.

Economically, it devalued her original masters while legally operating within existing contractual structures and culturally, it reframed ownership as a site of resistance rather than resignation of your fate. Taylor’s public declaration and acts of reclamation established a precedent that will forever influence industry norms.

This is a prime example of how Taylor did not reject the market; instead, she used it to correct an imbalance of power. She demonstrated her agency within capitalist systems and expanded it through knowledge, leverage and collective support. Her resulting wealth is not merely the outcome of market success but the by-product of an intervention that challenged exploitative norms.

Gender, Ambition, and Moral Scrutiny:

The outrage and reactions to Taylor Swift’s billionaire status cannot be disentangled from gendered expectations surrounding ambition. It is a truth universally acknowledged that women who pursue power are more likely to be perceived as unlikable, manipulative or morally suspect which is not the case for men with identical behaviours.

Taylor’s career trajectory has been marked by strategic decision making, brand management and her continued vulnerability and ability to express herself and her emotions in a way that marks her as a brilliant storyteller. Her career trajectory has increasingly positioned her within a traditionally masculine domain of authority.

The discomfort provoked by her wealth has disrupted the cultural framework through which she was initially understood which is as a confessional songwriter whose value lay in emotional transparency rather than strategic competence.

Emotional expressiveness is tolerated and even celebrated in women, so long as it is not accompanied by structural power and Taylor’s refusal to be boxed within these distinctions and her refusal to choose between vulnerability and ambition challenges this age-old stereotype and binary.

Criticism framed as economic concern often masks deeper anxieties about women who refuse to self-limit. The demand that she justifies, apologises for or redistributes her success reflects expectations that women temper achievement with humility. Where are these demands for George Lucas, Steven Spielberg or James Cameron?

The Demand for Relatability:

Taylor Swift’s wealth destabilizes the concept of relatability which is a quality disproportionately demanded of women in the public eye. Her music has fostered a sense of intimacy with her listeners who interpret it as personal connection. When that perceived intimacy coexists with immense wealth, it produces cognitive dissonance.

However, relatability is not a moral obligation and it is a market construct that benefits audiences more than the artists. We will be conflating art with personal availability if we insist that Swift remain economically accessible in order to preserve emotional authenticity. Additionally, this expectation reflects a broader pattern in which women are asked to trade power for connection.

Taylor’s refusal to do so exposes the transactional assumptions embedded in audience attachment. It is evident that the audience forever wants a palatable version of you.

Philanthropy and Responsibility:

Supporting Taylor’s billionaire status does not automatically mean that I idealize her use of wealth. While she has made significant philanthropic contributions, no individual’s charity can offset systematic inequality and to demand that she solve structural problems through personal generosity misunderstands both the scale of the problems and the role of the State.

At the same time, Taylor Swift’s labour practices, including reported bonuses for touring staff and advocacy for artists’ rights suggest an orientation toward responsibility rather than indifference. These actions do not absolve her from scrutiny but they do distinguish her from figures whose wealth accumulation is accompanied by deliberate opacity or harm.

Conclusion:

Taylor Swift’s billionaire status is not a referendum on capitalism’s moral legitimacy; instead, it is a test of our ability to think critically about power without resorting to symbolic scapegoating. 

Taylor did not inherit her billionaire status nor did she accumulate it through monopolistic control of necessities; she did not detach herself from the labour that generated it. She was successful in navigating an exploitative industry, reclaimed ownership over her art and leveraged cultural production into sustained economic power.

If the goal of anti-capitalist critique is to dismantle unjust systems, then precision is essential. Blanket condemnation may feel satisfying and will get you clicks and likes but it obscures meaningful distinctions and reinforces gendered double standards.

Taylor Swift’s success is unsettling precisely because it resists easy categorization. It exists at the intersection of labour and capital, vulnerability and authority, intimacy and distance. Engaging with that complexity does not weaken moral critique; it strengthens it.

Supporting her billionaire status is not an endorsement of inequality. It is my refusal to flatten nuance in the name of ideological comfort and a recognition that who holds power and how they came to hold it still and will forever matter!

 It always starts innocently enough. You decide to take a break, maybe a fifteen-minute scroll through nothingness, maybe a nap that dissolves time entirely. Then, right on cue, the guilt slithers in. That itchy little whisper: shouldn’t you be doing something right now? We’ve turned idleness into a moral crime. Stillness feels dangerous, indulgent like eating ice-cream for dinner or ignoring an urgent email that probably wasn’t urgent at all. We even disguise our rest as productivity to make it acceptable:
“I’m recharging”
“It’s part of my creative process”
“Self-care Sunday.”

As if simply being needs a justification.

We live in fast-paced times where an individual’s worth is measured in output. In posts published, tasks checked, and in steps counted. So when you do nothing, it feels like letting yourself and the world down. Even rest now comes with progress bars. My fitness kept prompting me to “track recovery” alongside “track fitness.” Imagine that! You must perform even in your sleep. Somewhere between capitalism and caffeine, we absorbed this belief that stillness is laziness. That if you’re not moving, you’re falling behind. But behind whom, exactly? The answer changes daily. Sometimes it is that influencer with the perfect morning routine, sometimes it is a colleague who is thriving on burnout, and sometimes you beat that imaginary version of yourself who never wastes a second.

Doing nothing has become an act of defiance because to sit quietly, without producing, improving, or proving, is to reclaim your humanity in a world that monetizes every breath. Maybe the problem isn’t that we’re tired. Maybe it’s that we’ve forgotten how to stop without feeling like we’re doing something wrong.

Somewhere along the way, someone decided that rest had to be earned. Like it’s a prize you get for surviving your own overcommitment. You work yourself raw. Then once you’ve proven that you are suffering enough, do you get to sleep, to read, to breathe. We have to wait till the inbox is empty, the dishes are done, the to-do list resembles a battlefield cleared of enemies. And when we finally sit down, it is not peace that we feel. It is relief edged with guilt. Because apparently, we can’t even stop without a reason.

We wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. We compliment people for being “so busy,” as if depletion is a virtue. “I haven’t slept properly in days” has somehow become a humblebrag and an offering to the gods of productivity. Meanwhile, our nervous systems are waving flags of complete surrender.

What’s tragic is that rest was never meant to be a trophy. In nature, it is a rhythm. The tide goes out. The moon wanes. Even seeds stay dormant before they bloom. No one scolds them for being “unproductive.” But humans? We schedule burnout like it’s a recurring meeting. The irony is painful: we chase momentum but refuse to see that even motion has pauses built in. A heartbeat, a breath, a drumbeat… they all depend on space between sounds. Take that space away, and what’s left isn’t rhythm. It’s noise.

So maybe it’s time to stop treating rest like a reward for endurance. Rest isn’t what you get after you’ve lived. It’s how you live. It’s the pause that keeps the music from collapsing into chaos.

There’s a quiet kind of rebellion in closing your laptop while the world screams “hustle.” No fireworks needed. Just a simple act: choosing to stop. We’ve been trained to believe that rest is the absence of progress, that stillness equals surrender. But what if… just what if, stopping isn’t the end of motion, what if it’s the beginning of meaning?

Rest, in its purest form, is refusal. Refusal to be consumed. Refusal to perform with burnout as proof of value. Refusal to run a race no one actually wins. To rest is to say: “I’m still human, even when I’m not producing.”

That’s not laziness. That’s resistance.

Look at any creative or revolutionary life, and you’ll see the pattern. Artists vanish between projects. Writers retreat after the noise. Rest isn’t what comes after greatness; it’s what allows greatness to exist.

Agust D goes silent before a storm of music.
SRK disappeared for years, before delivering a comeback that will go down in history.
{Ofcourse I had to tie-in my two favourite men 😀}

There’s something beautifully subversive about rest that’s unapologetic. Not “I’ve earned this,” but simply, “I exist, and that’s reason enough.”

Here’s the cruel joke: we say we want peace, but we can’t stand what peace feels like.

Stillness, true stillness, is a confrontation. When the noise stops, the mind doesn’t sigh in relief. Instead it panics. Suddenly there’s space, and in that space comes everything we’ve been running from: boredom, anxiety, unprocessed grief, the sound of our own thoughts echoing too loudly.

That’s why rest feels wrong. Stillness reveals what we are trying to avoid.

We’ve wired ourselves for constant stimulation. We can’t even stand in an elevator without reaching for our phones. Our brains, marinated in dopamine hits and notifications, have forgotten the flavor of quiet. We call it “doing nothing.” Anything but what it really is: existing without distraction. It terrifies us, because we’ve built our identities around doing. Ask someone who they are, and they’ll tell you what they do. Jobs, hobbies, achievements. Rest strips that armor off. It forces us to ask: who am I when I’m not performing usefulness? So we stay busy to avoid ourselves. We call it discipline, ambition, drive… anything that sounds better than fear.

So, how do we rebel gracefully without giving up life?

You don’t have to renounce society, move to the mountains, or delete every app to reclaim rest.

You just have to stop apologizing for being human. Rest doesn’t have to look like lying in a meadow with your phone on airplane mode (though that sounds divine). It can be quiet resistance threaded through ordinary hours… a refusal to make every second productive.

Here’s how to start rebelling without burning down your life:

1. Schedule rest first, not last.
Treat rest like a meeting with your sanity. Put it on your calendar before the work, not after. If you wait till you “deserve” it, you never will.

2. Redefine success.
Try measuring your days by energy instead of output. Did something restore you today? That counts more than the number of emails you sent.

3. Take micro-pauses.
Tiny rebellions does wonders for you. Stare out the window for five minutes. Breathe without purpose. Listen to music without multitasking. Be unproductive with intent.

4. Let boredom breathe.
You don’t have to fill every silence. Boredom is the compost heap of creativity. Leave it alone long enough and something wild might grow.

5. Rest publicly.
When someone asks how your weekend was, try saying “I did nothing,” and resist the urge to justify it. Watch their face twist in confusion. That’s their system short-circuiting.

6. Remember the body knows before the mind.
If your body is screaming for rest, believe it. You can’t think your way out of exhaustion. You can only stop.

At some point, you stop chasing and start noticing. The light on the wall. The sound of your own breath. The way time expands when you stop demanding things from it. You realize the world doesn’t fall apart when you step away. The emails keep arriving. The projects keep orbiting. The planet keeps spinning, almost insultingly fine without your supervision. And somehow, that’s not depressing. It’s relief.

Because maybe the point was never to keep up. Maybe the point was to wake up.

The real power lies in knowing when to stop, and daring to stop anyway.

So rest. Not because you’ve earned it, but because you exist.

Rest because the world has enough noise, and your silence might just be the most radical sound in it.

Rest because you can.

With Stranger Things Season 5 dropping its first four episodes on November 27th 2025, we need to refresh our memories and remember every character arc and re-organize our burning questions about the Upside Down. As the trailer suggests, the stakes have never been higher!

All of us need a battle plan which includes a strategic re-watch that won't consume our entire life. Forget binge-watching as we outline the 5 episodes that will remind you why this show became the cultural phenomenon that it is and prepare you for the final goodbye. 

So grab your waffles (Eggos) and let's dive into the essential viewing list for your last revision - 

1. Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers (Season 1, Episode 1) - The relevance and importance of this episode is marked by the exclusive clip that was released on Youtube. Why was Will chosen and his connection to the Upside Down seems to be the big plotline of season 5 and we need to understand the remember the nuances of the 1st episode to "close the circle". 

2. Chapter Seven: The Bathtub (Season 1, Episode 7) - This is where the show transforms from a simple mystery series to full scale sci-fi, dark and scary. We are introduced to the sensory deprivation tank scene which expands on Eleven's ability to travel mentally. We slowly begin to understand the full scale of Eleven's powers.  

3. Chapter Eight: The Mind Flayer (Season 2, Episode 8) - This season is one of my favourite and Noah Schnapp's acting is the cherry on top. Will Byers is at the center and he has been fundamentally changed by his time in the Upside Down. Every strategy the Mind Flayer has learned and used is something that it has learned from Will. The show's message of friendship, love, found family is beautifully showcased in this episode. 

4. Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab (Season 4, Episode 7) - We finally start piecing all the crucial information together as we are introduced to "One" aka Henry Creek aka Vecna. We finally understand why Eleven created the portal to the Upside Down. 

5. Chapter Nine: The Piggyback (Season 4, Episode 9) - This is the episode where the team loses and the bad guys triumphed. As the episode reaches a crescendo in the end, we are left with a Hawkins which is torn apart. Vecna finally gets what he wants and four gates open! The use of fear, mob mentality, sacrifices and deaths tie this episode beautifully and leaves us wanting more. 

Where are we now? 

From Season 4, we clearly get the picture that Vecna cannot leave the Upside Down. We have seen the Demagorgons and Demodogs in Hawkins but it is established that Vecna is confined to the Upside Down. And Season 5 seems to be the last and final phase of his plan to finally be able to be on the normal plane and not be stuck in the Upside Down forever. As our favourite characters embark on their last journey to tie all the loose ends, I cannot wait for Season 5 to start streaming!

As for you, you could binge all the episodes but life is short and streaming time is limited and not every episode is essential to understand the endgame. Watch these 5 episodes as you get ready for the finale of one of our favourite TV series.